After two poor fall fishing trips in a row, we were
a little apprehensive as we headed north to Tobin Lake this past week. While we
were about three days earlier than the previous year, we hoped the weather
would cooperate. Last year we fished every day with wind chill in the minus 12
Celsius range, a bone chilling experience that would have been almost bearable
if the fishing had been good. After a smooth trip up to the Tobin Lake resort,
the weather forecast gave us hope for at least three days of decent conditions.

DAY ONE

A moderate northwest wind was blowing as we headed
the eight miles across Tobin Lake to the mouth of the Saskatchewan River as it
enters this massive reservoir.

Jim gets a nice one on the pink jig

Fishing reports from other anglers we knew
indicated that there were some walleye being caught in this last stretch of
river. Boyd Holmen was once again the Captain of Jim Price and I, a combination
that had been together for a number of years on this particular trip. This year
though, we were fishing in real comfort, a brand new 20 foot Yar Craft that was
outfitted with all the tools needed to catch fish. Boyd had top of the line
electronics front and back to go with Minn Kota electric troll motors. A
Mercury four stroke provided the main power and a pro kicker made trolling very
simple.

Boyd decided that we would try jigging first to see
how the bite was. Pretty good as it turned out! We caught about 20 walleye on
our first long drift, with fish hitting 3/8 ounce jigs tipped with salted
shiners. Jim and I stuck with our pink jigs and Boyd had a nice glow green. It was
pretty impressive how hard these walleye were hitting the jigs…some so hard
that they almost ripped the rod out of your hand. After cleaning a few of these
walleye we realized why.

Start of the trolling run

Their stomachs were full of small shiner minnows,
schools of which showed up as clouds on Boyd’s depthfinder. Nine pounds was the biggest fish caught with
jigs this particular day. At the end of the day we tried trolling with cranks
and we caught seven more fish before calling it a day. Our fish total for this
day was about 90 walleye, more fish than we caught in our trip the previous
year.